Relay Inc. Secured $36 Million in Funding

The startup plans to expand its voice-based AI communication platform for industrial operations.

Updated on Sept. 30, 2026 in Manufacturing

Bold vector editorial illustration of a ruggedized smart radio handset hanging on a steel hook, symbolizing industrial communication infrastructure. — Relay Inc. secured $36 million in funding led by International Paper Co. to scale its industrial voice-based communication and transcription platform. AI Illustration. Upload story photo >

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Relay Inc. raised $36 million in an investment round led by International Paper Co. The funding brings the total capital raised by the company to over $90 million as it looks to scale its cloud-hosted smart radio communication systems.

Why it matters

Businesses currently face significant signal evaporation, where critical operational knowledge exchanged over radios remains unrecorded. Relay aims to solve this by digitizing frontline reports, helping firms improve efficiency and transform physical operations.

Relay Inc. has raised $36 million in new capital, contributing to a lifetime total exceeding $90 million. The company's platform supports more than 30 languages via its TeamTranslate capability to address operational data gaps.

The players

Relay Inc.

The company develops cloud-hosted smart radio communications systems designed to digitize and structure voice data from industrial environments.

International Paper Co.

A major player in the global packaging and pulp industry that led the latest investment round for Relay Inc.

Cerity Partners Ventures

An investment firm that participated in the $36 million funding round for the communication technology company.

G2 Ventures

A venture capital group that joined the recent investment cycle to support the growth of Relay Inc.

The details

The Relay platform captures voice communications in real time, utilizing domain-specific jargon training to transcribe and structure reports from frontline workers. This technology helps address the issue where official logs capture only 25% of equipment stoppages, leaving much activity undocumented.

September 30, 2026: Relay Inc. announced the $36 million funding round.

Market Landscape

Relay's funding follows the industry-wide push toward the digital transformation of physical operations by capturing previously lost frontline voice data. This investment signals a competitive pivot to capture data-sparse industrial sectors where legacy radio systems have historically limited automation efforts.

For manufacturing businesses, this technology offers a path to capture critical data often lost during radio exchanges, potentially reducing costly downtime and equipment failure. Clients can expect improved integration of voice reports into their existing enterprise management software.

The takeaway

Reliable data capture is essential for improving operational transparency in industrial settings. Companies should evaluate whether their current communication infrastructure leaves critical institutional knowledge unrecorded.